KCRag Forum

ST I demand you give me your apartment.

StrangerThings wrote:I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure there are more “affordable” apartments downtown than “luxury” or market rate currently. If anything, the ratio of affordable vs market rate is pretty even. I think ideally a 60/40 ratio would be ideal. 60 being market rate.

Incorrect.

We don't use "affordable" in quotes because there are actual definitions: http://www.hakc.org/affordable_housing/ ... rview.aspx

I believe most of what exists downtown is 80% AMI. Loftguy can probably confirm.

A few years ago the greater downtown market was evenly split between market rate rental, affordable rental, and owner-occupied/condo (per DTC). That has shifted dramatically since more market rate supply has been added and affordable units have converted as tax credits expire. Making this picture more complicated is that all rents are rising, not just the new supply. I think affordable units can raise rents in small increments (maybe 3% per year?). Of course, hardly any condo units have been added since the recession.

No idea what the mix is at this moment, but with no affordable units on the horizon it's going to be very uneven for years to come.

I would expect affordable units to shift to being south and east over time too due to high demand.

Look at JoCo where demand for single family homes at certain rates is so high home prices have jumped. Home construction costs so much that it's nearly impossible to build a brand new single family home under a certain dollar amount so existing homes are hot. Neighborhoods don't like denser redevelopment and fight it so in demand areas see value and cost spikes.

Downtown is in this situation where demand is so high that prices have spiked. It's logical that owners wouldn't maintain forced lower rates when they don't have to. Tall is expensive and the cost to build downtown likely is at or nearing the point that only tall makes financial sense.

The solution clearly isn't to fight developers downtown over parking but to shift major new incentives outside downtown and increasingly deny them for downtown projects except where developers go above and beyond. Move more towards letting the market decide.

The real need right now is the east side and taking $10 million and shifting it there could have value.

Taking the budget and dedicating money towards targeted projects in places like Wendall Phillips as more of a direct fund to help pay for affordable housing in neighborhoods with lots of empty lots would be smart. The city could pay out $x dollars as a grant and the unit must sell or rent a certain percentage under market rate. Ahandout to get affordable homes built provides the city value in terms of population growth in existing neighborhoods. It's based on the idea running utilities and roads into green field development costs the city money and why not spend that much on existing neighborhoods?

Paying out $35,000 per unit, $10 million could pay out to 285 units. At 2.5 people per unit that's 710 people. That's $14,000 per person. That's not that much in the scheme of things. If expected it to pay off in 10-15 years and that's very doable.

Over 10 years, that kind of numbers could build 2500 new homes for people. That's enough of a jumpstart to do a lot of good for the city by returning confidence in the east side.

Can someone point to another city's tactics on successfully getting affordable housing downtown? I'm having a hard time figuring how they make it work where property prices are harder and tighter spaces......isn't this what the first rings around "downtowns' are for?

I'm a huge fan of ecosocial diversity downtown just not smart enough to figure out how to make it work.

KCPowercat wrote:Can someone point to another city's tactics on successfully getting affordable housing downtown? I'm having a hard time figuring how they make it work where property prices are harder and tighter spaces......isn't this what the first rings around "downtowns' are for?

I'm a huge fan of ecosocial diversity downtown just not smart enough to figure out how to make it work.

Portland, Seattle, San Francisco. Varying degrees of success. It's not an easy problem to solve.

Sorry I guess so was asking how they did it...zoning, incentives, etc.

DaveKCMO wrote:
I believe most of what exists downtown is 80% AMI. Loftguy can probably confirm.

Is this 80%AMI for the metro area or just KC proper? If DT is going to compete with JOCO and other suburbs, we need to compare with them.

StrangerThings wrote:This brings up another question. All the buildings that received tax incentives to be affordable housing. When those tax credits expire, the owners would likely want to update and attempt to get market rate. Is the city going to retroactively come in and attempt to demand they keep a certain amount of units as affordable housing?

Chambers lofts where I lived ten years ago is a great example. It’s curently income restricted but those tax credits are soon to expire. The building is in a prime location within the power and light district. The units are spacious but need updating and the building needs all new windows. The owners held out selling to Cordish as they were aquring all the land. So surly they plan to try and get max value out of it?

Price Ceilings and AH Reqs. disincentive landlord reinvestment in existing properties. This is a more basic Microecon. concept. If the value is reduced bc government intervention they are less likely to reinvest or will reinvest less.

StrangerThings wrote:This brings up another question. All the buildings that received tax incentives to be affordable housing. When those tax credits expire, the owners would likely want to update and attempt to get market rate. Is the city going to retroactively come in and attempt to demand they keep a certain amount of units as affordable housing?

Chambers lofts where I lived ten years ago is a great example. It’s curently income restricted but those tax credits are soon to expire. The building is in a prime location within the power and light district. The units are spacious but need updating and the building needs all new windows. The owners held out selling to Cordish as they were aquring all the land. So surly they plan to try and get max value out of it?

There’s entire shows on hgtv that show what will happen.

Someone comes into a hot neighborhood. They buy an older home, spend something like another 20% upgrading and lease (sell) for 40% more than the old rate, bringing it up to current market rates to make money.

You don’t need to have taken an economics class to get this point.

Incentives to get 100 affordable units passed and the city is paying for the next garage.
Interesting thing is the star says “underground garage”.
Yet another sales tax coming downtown too. At what point will people stop renewing sales taxes?

There’s hyperbole around only gaining 100 affordable units for $80mm which is clearly BS.

It seems to me the deal could have been better for the city but let’s be honest, there’s almost no one else putting up new towers of this size in KC except for Cordish, the hotel took a decade to make happen, and we’re not building a city for the next ten years but are setting the stage for a city in the year 2100. Thinking long term has value and there’s too much what about 2019? thinking going on. Would love to see a year by year income chart for the next twenty years just including gains from tax abatements dropping. I bet it’s a lot more than the Cordish deal is costing.

This project clearly the kind of thing where hindsight is 20/20 and we shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bath water.

cordish can start getting some of that goodwill back in its favor by killing off pizza bar, which in a recent poll* of local folks is the single greatest thing cordish could possibly do for downtown in the next three months


*sample size = 2

StrangerThings wrote:Most of the city council knows how bad of an idea this whole "renegotiation" idea was. At least how it was done and the timing it which it was done. In the end, all this did was expedite a plan to convert the midland office building into affordable housing, undermine the trust Cordish has in the city and further perpetuate some local citizens perception of Cordish as a big bad out of town greedy developer.

The city made an unfavorable deal at a time they so desperately needed someone like Cordish to invest in downtown. You don't change an agreement because as one of the two council members said, "times have changed". They have! Downtown is great and growing now, that doesn't mean you slap the people who helped turn it around as if you no longer need them.

I sincerely hope that the majority of local folks look back on Cordish in 50 years in a highly positive way instead of the big bad out of town company.

They believed in us when no other big developers did.

StrangerThings wrote:I sincerely hope that the majority of local folks look back on Cordish in 50 years in a highly positive way instead of the big bad out of town company.

The way we look on local AMC for squatting on the south loop for decades and then abandoning ship when they were bought by the Chinese?

Yes, kill Pizza Bar.

So now that the council has reached an agreement. When do we see the renderings?

There's a rendering I don't think we've seen before in this document prepared for the Chapter 353 board.

FYI - It is marked as a preliminary rendering, but it has the building at approx 30 stories, and a roofline that tilts eastward over the top 4 stories

KCDowntown

KCDowntown wrote:There's a rendering I don't think we've seen before in this document prepared for the Chapter 353 board.

FYI - It is marked as a preliminary rendering, but it has the building at approx 30 stories, and a roofline that tilts eastward over the top 4 stories

KCDowntown

I like it. At least it is not a rectangle. Looks a lot like One Cardinal Way here in St. Louis. Everything about it, the angular roof, height, overall design. It will add pizzazz to the skyline an breakup the Cordish Wall of rectangular blocks. Get it done!

How come Cordish doesn’t use the tops of the P&L restaurants better? It seems the Lights could have had access out onto those areas for green space or events, etc. Might bring more of an activity feel to the district.

Like it.

So when does construction start?

Didn’t Two Light also initially have an angled roof that was removed?